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The MTNL-Delhi set up in 1986 as a public sector enterprise to manage the telecom system in the capital has indeed come a long way - from enjoying monopoly over the market to meeting aggressive competition from private operators; from a seller's to a buyer's market. In the process, it has reoriented its strategies and work culture to suit the new environment and to expand its hold on the different segments of the telecom market. A.K. Arora, Executive Director, MTNL-Delhi, in an interview to B.S. Padmanabhan, explains how the public sector enterprise has successfully faced the challenges posed by the entry of private operators in the telecom sector and geared itself to achieve its corporate vision of providing world class telecom service at affordable price and meeting the diverse needs of customers. According to him, the landline network continues to be MTNL's strength and vigorous steps are being taken to make it more attractive. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the performance of MTNL-Delhi?
As you are aware, MTNL is a leading telecom services provider in Delhi and has 23.5 lakh connections. During the current fiscal from April 1, 2005, around 2.35 lakh connections have been provided so far. We are now providing about 1,500 GSM mobile connections daily. In January 2005, we introduced the broadband service and since then we have provided 58,000 connections. Of course, there had been the problems of surrender of landline connections. This is mainly due to the penetration of mobile services and the preference of the customers for mobile telephones. We, however, feel that the broadband services, which work on the same copper pair, would not only be a source of additional revenue for MTNL but would also check the surrendering of landline connections by the subscribers. In addition to this, we have provided a number of value-added services. Soon we will introduce prepaid facility on the landline connections also. We feel that this will make the landline connection more attractive.
According to an evaluation by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, MTNL-Delhi has not come up to the prescribed benchmarks for quality of service in certain respects. For instance, the fault rate at 17.06 per cent was found to be still high. What is your comment on this and what steps have you taken to improve the operational efficiency and meet the benchmarks?
The fault rate in MTNL based on direct line is presently 7.68 for 100 direct lines a month. Only in the rainy season in July 2005 it rose to 12.59 per cent. We have taken a number of steps to reduce the fault rate further. One of the important steps, which we have initiated in this regard, is to make the network `poleless'. This means removing the hanging drop-wires and poles from the network. Besides this, a number of switch units and digital line carriers have been commissioned to reduce the length of the last mile copper. Our total capacity at present is 29 lakh lines out of which 1,82,000 lines are from E 10B exchanges, which are old. We would replace them by new technology switches. Our network in Delhi still has some paper core cable and these are being replaced by jelly-filled cables. Currently the junction network, that is, the interconnection between the exchanges, is based on optical fibre. We are extending the optical fibre to the customer's premises. We have a plan to add 20,000 fibre kilometres during the current year. All these measures would make the landline connections fault-free.
What is the extent to which you have been able to withstand and overcome the competition from private operators? What is your share of the market in Delhi for different telecom products - landline, mobile, Internet and so on?
No doubt there is intense competition in Delhi with a number of operators in the field. In the present environment, when the tariff is very attractive even for the common man, the main criterion for the customer in making his/her choice is the quality of services provided by the operator. This includes not only the quality of the network but also the quality of customer care. Our strength is our trained and experienced officers and staff, who are always available to attend to the customer's complaints. Our share of the market in the fixed line, including fixed wireless telephone (FWT), is more than 85 per cent and this means that we have near monopoly in the area of landline connections.
MTNL is a late entrant in GSM mobile market and currently its share is only 13 per cent. But we are increasing our mobile network at a fast rate. We are providing 1,500 GSM mobile connections daily. In the broadband area, we have 58,000 connections in Delhi. This is quite substantial considering that there are only 6.9 lakh broadband connections in the entire country.
How are you strengthening your technological base to sustain your hold on the market and expand it?
We have taken a number of steps to increase the operational efficiency of the landline network in order to make it fault-free and more attractive to the customer by adding value-added services and broadband connections. We have a state-of-the-art broadband network consisting of 181 nodes, called DSLAMs, in Delhi. We are in a position to provide high-speed broadband connection, ranging from 256 Kbps to 2 Mbps, in any place in the capital. Early next year we would provide video on demand on the broadband, which would make our broadband service a truly Triband service - voice, high speed and video. We have a strong GSM mobile network with 400BTS as on date. Additional BTS are being provided to increase the capacity and coverage. A number of value-added services have also been provided by MTNL on the mobile network. In the next fiscal, that is 2006-07, we will procure 4 million mobile lines with 3G capability. Soon we will launch a new 222 BTS CDMA mobile network, which will provide FWT and mobile phones, both prepaid and post-paid.
We are investing in the current year Rs.1,300 crores on development activities. A ten-node MPLS-VPN network is under installation. It is a secured gigabit backbone IP network. It will provide national broadband IP-VPN services. Besides this, we are putting up a new IN platform, which would provide additional value-added services, including a prepaid connection, on the landline network. As I have earlier mentioned, we give the utmost importance to customer care. We have at present a network of 88 customer care centres and five call centres, which take care of the customer needs in all the segments of the telecom market - mobile, WLL, landline, broadband, and the Internet. We are in the process of strengthening this network by setting up a unified 300-seater call centre, which would supplement the existing call centres. We are also in the process of installing four new-generation IP-based exchanges. In addition, we would lay 20,000 fibre kilometres of optical fibre cable to take fibre to homes in order to meet the customer needs of high-speed data and video.
How near are you to your goal of becoming a total telecom service provider?
Our strength lies in our landline network and we are taking vigorous steps to make it fault-free and attractive. MTNL is the only company which can meet the diverse needs of the customer in the telecom field. Our services cover landline, broadband, GSM mobile, CDMA FWT and mobile, the Internet, Wi-Fi, ISDN, video-conferencing, Centrex facility and digital signature certification. The development of telecom is one of the key areas of infrastructure development, which the Government of India is closely monitoring. MTNL is taking all the steps to ensure that the fruits of development in the telecom and IT sectors are made available to every citizen at an affordable price.
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